The kidnapping of Nagdilaab Foundation, Inc. program director Espi Hupida and freelance humanitarian worker Milet Mendoza last week makes one wonder anew what makes Basilan such a terrible haven for kidnappings and other acts of violence and terrorism like no other province in the country.
Surely its geography and topography make it conducive to lawlessness. The thick jungles and numerous islands south of the main Basilan island provide ideal hiding places for the bandits and their kidnap victims. Most of those kidnapped even in the Zamboanga peninsula and those in Palawan in 2001 - were often spirited away to the province. The poor condition of the road networks - the few and far apart that there are, anyway - make it difficult for authorities to conduct pursuit operations. It is ecologically a wild place, indeed.
But there is something else, too. The Yakan natives tend to be a culturally closed, even xenophobic community who would not cooperate or associate with outsiders, such as pursuing police and military troops. This cultural insularity is perhaps the main reason why the Yakan culture remains as among the purest, least tainted by modernization or influenced by other cultures today in the Philippines. Their language is very different in vocabularies, bears almost no similarity to any other languages or dialects in the archipelago. Their dances are said to be the most intricate; their fabric weaves a source of much marvel.
With the onset of the Bangsamoro rebellion in the 1970s, a kind of Basilan for Yakans only movement took hold among the natives. Christians who lived in hinterland or upland plantations and farms were squeezed out by the threats of violence. The minority Christians in Basilan today are living in tight and tightly secured communities, mostly confined to urban districts. Only natives roam freely in the unfriendly rural areas.
Because of this fierceness, Basilan was the only province during the Martial Law era to be placed under the rule of a military governor to contain the tremendous amount of violence disgorging out of the island onto the Mindanao mainland at the time.
When Pedro Cuevas, who founded Lamitan town, escaped from the San Ramon Penal Colony in the late 1860s along with a few other prisoners, he did not seek to hide in the Zamboanga peninsula, where the easy-going Subanons and which even at that time was already dotted with Christian chapels, could not have offered him safe haven. He and his band sailed away to Basilan, and several operations by the Spanish guardia civil were never able to catch him. The native Yakans helped and protected him from his foreigner-enemies, too, after he impressed them with his personal prowess and martial skills.
Nowadays, poor or bad local governance further compound socio-economic problems there such as to make the residents angry and disposed to violence. Decades ago, American multinationals milked the islands natural resources with their huge agricultural plantations and land grants, making the natives resentful. Consequently, the late Congressman Wahab Akbar, himself a victim of political violence, declared just weeks before he died that most of his provincemates are sympathetic to the Abu Sayyaf terrorists, unfortunately a name synonymous to the province.
In July 2001, the Abu Sayyaf boldly occupied the town of Lamitan, with their foreign victims who they kidnapped in Palawan in tow. After a night and a day holed up in the parish church and nearby hospital, they boldly and safely marched away while still daylight, passing through a predominantly Muslim village whose residents did not stop them at all, and disappeared into safety. This is how dangerous Basilan can be, and it is a fact the Nagdilaab and Christian Childrens Fund people forgot when they went to Tipo-Tipo last week and got kidnapped by people they only wanted to help.(Peace Advocates Zamboanga)
